Sabrina Co: The scent of success

MANILA, Philippines - Christian Dior once said, “A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.”

In the case of Sabrina Co, she wants her fragrances to tell more than her own personal story.

With her athletic frame usually dressed down in a shirt, shorts and flip-flops, 17-year-old Sabrina Co is not what you would imagine a perfumer slash entrepreneur to be. She even surprises herself at times. In fact, she didn’t know that she was on Tim Yap’s list of the “14 to Watch For in 2014,” which was published in The Philippine STAR last December. She only found out about it when her teacher in British School Manila told her.

Sabrina’s story isn’t just about how a high school student from the Philippines became a recognized entrepreneur. It is also about creating her scent of success, a blend of the earthiness of home and the sweetness of charity.

The social enterprise ATIN (“ours” in Filipino), which also stands for Aiming to Inspire a Nation, offers home fragrances inspired by Sabrina’s travels in the Philippines. She tries to bottle the idyllic and romantic aspects of life in her homeland with the scents of Boracay, Intramuros, Palawan, Burnham Park, dalandan and cha (tea).

Sabrina is a sportswoman involved in swimming, volleyball and football. Her love for an active life outdoors, particularly the beach, inspired her favorite fragrance, Boracay. During focus group discussions, she was immediately drawn to what “Boracay” captured in a whiff — the iconic sunset through orange blossoms, petitgrain, lavender and musk. It was like breathing in the sea air, while walking on the white powdery stretches of the island.

All of her life, Sabrina has been surrounded by the entrepreneurial spirit of her parents, Arnold and Ruth Co. At first, Sabrina wanted to become a doctor and then a lawyer, but towards the end of high school, she figured she was born — and bred — to become a businesswoman.

“I’m young and I’m still learning. Luckily, I have the support of my parents. They are the entrepreneurs who have inspired me to start young. We usually talk about ATIN over the dinner table. I think, to be successful, you really have to have a passion for what you do. If you have no interest, then you’re basically going nowhere. I’d like to think that I’m a very passionate person,” she shares.

Over several summers in Europe, Sabrina learned to be “nosey” in the different boutique shops. At the tender age of 15, she started her own business. “Home fragrances seemed to be a unique concept as I noticed that we did not have a lot of these fragrances in Manila. I did not want to enter into a field that was very competitive. I knew it would not be easy especially for someone as young as me. Still, I felt so strongly about starting up my own company,” she says.

Working hard and working smart, she chose the path of home fragrances because it was less competitive than perfumery. The ATIN collection comes in the forms of reed diffusers, room and linen sprays, scented soy wax candles and automatic fragrance dispensers.

More than anything, Sabrina works with heart. She signed an agreement with the Jollibee Group Foundation to support the Busog, Lusog, Talino School Feeding Program. As part of the partnership, a portion of the proceeds of ATIN will help feed pupils of San Juan Elementary School in San Juan City for one school year. The program will also educate the students and their parents in proper nutrition and diet, trying to change their lives one meal at a time.

Sabrina was also introduced to the world of the most respected noses, Givaudan and the Givaudan Perfumery School. The legendary institute claims to have trained the perfumers responsible for approximately one third of the fragrances in the market today.

“My dad introduced me to the CEO of Givaudan and the latter basically taught me how to smell. The CEO of Givaudan also said you can’t smell too many fragrances at the same time, and that you have to take breaks. Coffee really helps. I am planning to go to Grasse (in France) this summer to further my studies on fragrances.”

Sabrina has a knack for aligning herself with the best in the business. Alphaland’s Balesin Island Club asked her to create a custom fragrance that would smell flowery and powdery, green and woody, all at once. She is also enlisting a team to create a spa line that she can introduce in the near future.

“I want to give something more to people abroad…from the Philippines,” she says.

With Sabrina’s heart and soul in her products, what more can you ask for?

(ATIN products are available in Kultura Filipino.

For inquiries, call 631-5470 or visit www.atin.com.ph.)

Photography by MAU AGUASIN • Makeup by MIKKA MARCAIDA • Hairstyling by KENJIE APOSTADERO